I'm a reporter who has worked in business journalism for the past few years. In August of 2009 I joined Forbes to cover the residential housing market, luxury real estate and all things fancy-house related. I also compare economic statistics across cities for our data-driven rankings, and from time to time I write about other things. Like all New York City natives, I have a special gene for obsessing about square footage, home interiors and real estate market conditions. Follow me on twitter: @ForbesFrancesca.

10/14/2010 @ 1:19PM62,546 views

Mukesh Ambani's Skyscraper-Mansion is the World's Most Expensive Home

India’s richest man, and the fourth-richest man in the world, has eschewed understatement and built a 27-story Mumbai skyscraper, as Forbes reported this morning. Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani plans to move into 570-foot building, called Antila, this month. But in addition to being an imposing postmodern edifice, it likely sets a record as the world’s most expensive residential home. The Telegraph reports the home is worth £630 million, or $1 billion. Yes, you read that right.

The last time Forbes ranked the world’s most expensive homes was November 2009, when The Manor, Candy Spelling’s Beverly Hills mansion, won out- it was priced at $150 million. That home is still for sale, and its price hasn’t budged, qualifying it for the number one spot on our recent list of America’s most expensive homes. Our global list limits itself to homes currently on the market, and Ambani’s behemoth isn’t for sale. Plus, that ranking is a year old – new mansions may have come on the market since. But even given those facts, at $1 billion the Antila outprices any home on the market, anywhere in the world, by an order of magnitude.

But the story goes back further than that. As we reported way back in 2008, the billionaire has planned to break records with this home for years. When he was worth $43 billion (his net worth is down by nearly a third), he commissioned architecture firms Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates, the minds behind the Mandarin Oriental, to design the home. We have a full slide show of their original plans on the site.

Given the enormous gap between the Antila’s sale price and the known closing cost of any home sold in recent years, there’s an awfully good chance that this is the most paid for a home, ever. Consider the highest price paid for a home in 2010: somewhere between $47 million and $72 million for Le Belvedere, in Bel Air.

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